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ON 12 a 
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WAS JESUS 


AN 
HISTORICAL PERSON? 


ELWOOD Peete Bio: 


NEW YORK 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 West 32ND STREET 
LONDON +: TORONTO - MELBOURNE & BOMBAY 
1926 


COPYRIGHT, 1926 
By Oxrorp UNIVERSITY PREss 
AMERICAN BRANCH 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


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SOLD GID KD 





FOREWORD 


sa at f little volume was presented 
4 be in the form of two discourses 
= in Emmanuel Church, Bos- 
ton, on Sunday mornings in January, 
1926, at a time when the question under 
consideration was receiving a good deal 
of attention from periodicals and from 
the daily press. In offering my work 
to the public I have preserved the direct 
form of address and have made no 
change in my statements beyond forti- 
fying them by a few notes and the ad- 
dition of several paragraphs in regard 
to Josephus, rendered necessary by the 
discovery of new material of which I 


Vv 





V1 FOREWORD 


was not aware when | preached my 


sermons. 
These addresses presuppose some ac- 


quaintance on the part of the writer with 
the works of the so-called “ Mythol- 
ogists,” particularly with the writings of 
Jensen, William Benjamin Smith, Ed- 
ward Carpenter, Arthur Drews, Kalt- 
hoff and others, whose titles in this 
brief, informal presentation, I need not 
mention. In preparing it I have availed 
myself of the studies of von Soden, 
Schweitzer, Johannes Weiss and of the 
encyclopedias and dictionaries. My 
first inventory, ‘“‘ Witness of Enemies,” 
I judge to be quite complete as regards 
authentic and sufficiently early doc- 
umentary evidence. My second in- 
ventory, “ Witness of Friends,” is, of 
course, utterly incomplete. Within the 
narrow limits of a Sunday morning ad- 
dress I could but select two witnesses 
out of many, nor do much justice to 
them. 


FOREWORD Vill 


I have no doubt that my carefulness 
in dealing with the Bible themes will be 
offset in the opinion of the educated by 
my fanaticism in believing in the reality 
of most of the miracles ascribed to 
Jesus. On this subject, however, I have 
sources of information which most li- 
terary critics do not possess, and I am 
content to await the verdict of the next 
two or three generations of scholars. 

Although, personally, I regard the 
denial of Jesus ’ existence as a mere ab- 
erration of criticism and a curiosity of 
literature, I have treated the subject, 
within the limits imposed on me, with 
the utmost seriousness. It would be too 
much to expect that this or any other 
truthful statement in regard to the 
reality of the Lord’s existence will pre- 
vent this great fact of history from being 
questioned again. Yet I venture to 
think that this modest array of wit- 
nesses, mostly dating from the first cen- 
tury, will make the denial of these facts 


Vill FOREWORD 


more difficult to men whose education 
permits them to judge of the nature and 
value of historical evidence. 

Exiwoop WorCESTER 


RECTORY OF EMMANUEL CHURCH, 
Boston, May, 1926. 


G CTAS Ey 


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Newt, 4 






PNA : 
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WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL 
PERSON? 


1. THE WITNESS OF ENEMIES 
| 7a INTEND TO SPEAK today 


2°, for the first time in my life of 
4 our reasons for believing in 
Jesus as an historical person. 
This is a fact which we usually take for 
granted and which we have a right to 
take for granted. During the past few 
months, however, a Bishop of our 
Church (Bishop Brown) was deposed 
by the General Convention chiefly for 
the expression of his doubt that Jesus 
ever existed as an historical person. 
More recently one of the most eminent 
Rabbis of American Judaism (Dr. 
Wise) has been roundly berated by his 





2 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


fellow Rabbis, and has been threatened 
with punishment for venturing to say 
in a sermon that he no longer regards 
Jesus as a mythical person, as he had 
been taught to do, but as an historical 
character whose moral teachings ought 
to be followed by Jews as well as by 
Christians. From the outcry that fol- 
lowed, one would suppose that Dr. Wise 
had betrayed a sacred duty and had 
wronged all Israel. 

I have a profound respect for the feel- 
ings and the good qualities of the Jews, 
but when it comes to their challenge of 
the existence of Jesus Christ, they can- 
not wonder if Christians also are inter- 
ested in their surmises. 

From what source did they and 
Bishop Brown and others derive this 
singular and highly objectionable idea? 
From four or five books written by an 
American, an Englishman, two Ger- 
mans, and a Frenchman, who are all 
mythologists, whose pleasant fancies 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 3 


ought not to be applied to the persons 
and facts of history. I shall not try to 
make you well acquainted with these 
works, They would only irritate you. 
They all develop the same theme — 
namely, that the being we know as Jesus 
Christ never existed on earth in a human 
form nor led a human life; but that He 
is an ideal figure, according to some the 
creation of the spiritual longings and as- 
pirations of His times, according to 
others a new embodiment of an old na- 
ture-myth in which a divine hero 
suffers and is slain and rises again. 
The American mathematician, Wil- 
liam Benjamin Smith, believes that 
a long series of such persons were 
worshipped in the East from time to 
time, and that they all were called 
Jesus. Of course, he offers no evidence 
for this fancy. 

Kalthoff conceives that the whole 
character and life of Jesus were created 
by the Church. This conception rests 


4. WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


on a certain view of history, namely, 
that great and sweeping moral and so- 
cial changes do not proceed from in- 
dividuals, but from masses of men —a 
view I believe to be the very reverse of 
the truth. It is easy to say the Church 
created Christ. Itis less easy to answer 
the question who or what then created 
the Church? And if the Church were 
able to create the marvelous figure we 
encounter in the Gospels, why, having 
brought forth the Gospels, did she lose 
her creative power, so that in her whole 
vast literature there is no other writing 
which remotely resembles them? 

If this were true, we should expect 
the most ideal and the least human por- 
traiture of Jesus to come first and the 
more human qualities to be added artis- 
tically afterward. On the contrary, it 
is our bold, human, harsh, realistic Gos- 
pel of Mark which comes first, and the 
most ideal and philosophic Gospel of 
John which comes last. 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 5 


Neither of these attempts sets forth 
the myth-making power of mankind on 
a grand scale. This was reserved for a 
real Mythologist, the great Babylonian 
scholar, Jensen, who takes the old 
Babylonian Nature-Myth of the adven- 
tures of Gilgamesh and Eabani and the 
goddess Ishtar — thinly veiled person- 
ifications of the Sun, the Moon, and the 
planet Venus, and tries to find counter- 
parts to their exploits in the life of the 
Lord. 

Mythologists are well known to be in- 
corrigible in the application of their the- 
ories. ‘They have no sense of reality. 
They live in a world of imagination. 
Give them a name which dimly reminds 
them of some other name, an event like 
climbing a mountain, or going to sea, or 
seeing the sun rise, or suffering, or doing 
hard labor, which most men experience 
at some time of their lives, and, with 
the help of parallel columns, they will 
find the most marvelous resemblances 


6 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


between the most remote persons and 
things. By their arts almost any man 
who ever lived could be proved a sym- 
bol, an idea, a myth. 

Without consulting Archbishop 
Whateley, I think I could construct a 
better argument than Jensen’s to prove 
that Napoleon Bonaparte never lived. 
Using the philological methods of the 
Mythologists, it is easy to see that the 
name Napoleon is only a modification 
of Apollo. It is true, it begins and ends 
with an n and contains an inconvenient 
e, but that ought not to disturb strong 
minds. So he may be regarded as an 
incarnation of Apollo, the Sun god. 
Having been born on the Island of Cor- 
sica, he rose, like the Sun, out of the Sea, 
and, having run his course, his sun set 
on the opposite side of the heavens, on 
another island, St. Helena. Napoleon 
had seven brothers and sisters who re- 
volved about him — derived all their 
light and sustenance from him —the 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 7 


seven planets. Napoleon had twelve 
Marshals, corresponding doubtless to 
the twelve months of the year, etc., etc. 

By such arts we can prove anything, 
and I am surprised that our Hebrew 
brethren should surrender their reputa- 
tion for sanity and sagacity by com- 
mitting themselves to such aberrations. 
All honor to Rabbi Wise if he has seen 
the light. 

Now, without further prelude, let us 
pass to our subject and ask what histor- 
ical evidence we have for our Lord 
Jesus’ existence and place in history. 
In making this inventory I must ask 
your indulgence. I do not wish to make 
this an unduly long sermon, and [| shall, 
therefore, consider today only the wit- 
ness of those who were not Christians 
and leave to another occasion the wit- 
ness of our Scriptures and the words and 
deeds of Christ. I cannot pretend to be 
able to exhaust this subject. I have pre- 
pared this statement as I could find the 


8 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


time, as one of the duties of a busy week. 
But I know enough to be aware that the 
doubts which deprived Bishop Brown of 
his orders, and which appear to be ob- 
sessing the minds of many persons be- 
sides the Jews, are not well-founded, 
and whatever my knowledge or my ig- 
norance, I do not intend to keep silent 
any longer when the question of the 
human existence of Jesus is raised every 
day in the papers. 

In listening to the roll of witnesses 
outside of Christianity, that is to say, 
the Jewish and Roman writers of the 
first century after Jesus’ death, who un- 
mistakably allude to Jesus as a person, 
you may be disappointed and even 
startled to find that the roll is so short 
and that the witness is not more full and 
explicit. Still, have we a right to expect 
more? Upto His thirtieth year, accord- 
ing to all our Christian accounts, Jesus 
lived a life of the utmost obscurity in an 
utterly unimportant town of despised 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 9 


Galilee, known to His townsmen only as 
a young carpenter. His disciples were 
young, unknown men. His public min- 
istry, according to the Synoptic Gospels, 
lasted one year, in the course of which 
He visited Jerusalem once only, a few 
days before He was crucified as a male- 
factor. He wrote nothing. Under these 
circumstances is it probable that He 
would have received much attention 
from the world’s historians of the next 
few decades, while His cause was still 
in its infancy? Further, we should rec- 
ognize that the authors on whom we 
have to depend were either proud, aris- 
tocratic, narrow-minded Romans who 
despised what they regarded as base 
Oriental superstitions, or jealous, hos- 
tile Jews; so that, if for the time being, 
we exclude the testimony of friends and 
depend only on that of enemies, we 
have no right to expect much more than 
we have. The real proof of Jesus’ ex- 
istence is to be found in the Gospels, in 


IO WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


St. Paul, in the Church, in the creation 
of a new world out of nothing. 

One man indeed we might look to for 
a clear, unshakable statement in regard 
to Jesus, especially as he has given us a 
splendid and perfectly authentic picture 
of John the Baptist. I mean, of course, 
the Jewish historian Josephus, who was 
born only about thirty-seven years after 
Jesus and who wrote freely of His times. 
Probably Josephus did write something 
in regard to Jesus, but some later Chris- 
tian scholar, not satisfied with what 
Josephus had written about his Lord, 
and thinking to honor Jesus by a for- 
gery, modified Josephus’ statement and 
substituted words of his own, which 
Josephus could not have written, un- 
less he himself had been a Christian, not 
a Pharisee. 

The famous passage occurs in the 
18th Book of Josephus’ Antiquities, the 
3rd Chapter, the 3rd Section. 

The words are these: “ At this time 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? II 


lived Jesus, a man full of wisdom, if one 
may call him aman. He performed un- 
believable deeds, and was the teacher of 
those men who are willing to accept the 
truth. He drew to himself many Jews 
and many of the heathen world. He 
was the Christ. Through the accusa- 
tion of our leaders, Pilate condemned 
him to the death of the cross. Yet those 
who had loved him even now were not 
unfaithful. On the third day he ap- 
peared to them again alive, as divinely- 
sent prophets had foretold, along with 
thousands of other wonderful things. 
To this day the people called Christians, 
who derive their name from him, have 
not ceased.” 

It is generally admitted by scholars 
that this passage, as it has come down 
to us in all Greek manuscripts, cannot 
be from the pen of Josephus. On the 
other hand, it is hard to believe that the 
historian who wrote freely of John the 
Baptist and who displays so lively a cu- 


I2 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


riosity in regard to the least matters of 
his age, should have written nothing in 
regard toJesus and of the movement in- 
augurated by Jesus which, at the time he 
wrote (93-94 A.D.), had divided his na- 
tion. Critical scholars who wish to 
strike out this passage zn toto as a Chris- 
tian forgery explain this silence by 
Josephus’ unwillingness to give offence 
to the Romans through any allusions to 
Messianic claims among the Jews which 
might appear to threaten the sovereign- 
ity of Rome. This, however, is merely 
an hypothesis and it would appear to be 
fairer to deal with the passage as it 
stands. One difficulty, which has al- 
ways been felt, we may now be in a posi- 
tion to remove. 

The famous’ passage occurs in the 
chapter in which Josephus describes 
Pilate’s acts in crushing insurrections 
among the Jews. After relating Pilate’s 
attempt to introduce busts of the Em- 
peror into Jerusalem; which met with 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 13 


bitter opposition, and his forcible appro- 
priation of temple funds to pay for the 
aqueduct he had built, the passage in 
regard to Jesus follows, which appears 
to break the thread of Josephus’ narra- 
tive, as no tumult or popular uprising 
occurs in the Greek text, nor does any 
description of the crucifixion follow. It 
would appear then either that this pas- 
sage is a complete forgery, clumsily in- 
troduced by a Christian hand in a place 
where it does not belong, or else that 
Josephus introduced his allusion to 
Jesus in this place because he wished to 
describe and did describe an insurrec- 
tion among the people which occurred 
at this time in connection with Jesus. 
The plain and emphatic statement of 
our Gospels in regard to the trilingual 
inscription affixed to the cross, in He- 
brew, Greek and Latin, may be regarded 
as proof that Jesus was executed as a 
public offender, an insurgent against 
the power of Rome. Both St. Mark 


14, WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


and St. Luke allude pointedly to Ba- 
rabbas “which lay bound with them 
that had made insurrection with him, 
who had committed murder with him 
in the insurrection.” Although the exact 
date of this uprising is not specified, it 
must have occurred shortly before, as 
the execution of such conspirators 
would not long be delayed, and the fact 
that Barabbas was proposed for libera- 
tion as a substitute for Jesus might in- 
dicate that to the popular mind they 
were associated in the same uprising. 
If so, the forcible “ cleansing” of the 
temple, the scourge of small cords, the 
overthrowing of the tables of the money- 
changers, which have always presented 
difficulties, both moral and physical, 
would fall into place, and the question, 
“Ts it lawful to render tribute unto 
Caesar or no? ” would gain new point 
and relevancy. We have also to recall 
the strange, enigmatic words of Jesus, 
reported by St. Luke, whose application 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? I5 


we have never understood. “ He that 
hath no sword, let him sell his garment 
and buy one.” It would seem then that 
half concealed in our Gospels is the 
memory of a more tumultuous entrance 
into Jerusalem than we have been ac- 
customed to recognize. Perhaps Jose- 
phus did know of some insurrection 
connected with the death of Jesus which 
caused him to write of the Lord in this 
chapter of his book. 

In this connection the article of Dr. 
F. Lehmann-Haupt, the well-known 
archaeologist of the University of Inns- 
bruck, “ New Testimony in regard to 
Jesus,” is of peculiar interest. In this 
paper * Dr. Lehmann-Haupt calls atten- 
tion to a recently discovered “ North- 
Slavic ” manuscript of Josephus’ Jewish 
Wars which gives a full account of 
Jesus’ appearance in Jerusalem and the 
tumult which attended it. Although 
this passage contains unmistakable rem- 
iniscences of the famous passage of the 


16 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


Antiquities, as well as other Chris- 
tian interpolations, it also presents new 
and hitherto unknown material in the 
style and manner of Josephus and con- 
taining just such facts and incidents as 
we should expect of the Jewish historian 
in describing Jesus’ fate. Lehmann- 
Haupt feels justified in affirming, “ We 
may rest assured that we are dealing 
here with a genuine record derived from 
Josephus and presumably with the orig- 
inal passage from which a later Chris- 
tian reviser has eliminated the very 
points that justified its inclusion in the 
part of Josephus’ work where it ap- 
peared — that is, among the accounts of 
insurrections, as the episodes it de- 
scribed would appear to be in the eyes 
of the Jewish high priests and of the 
Romans.” 

We know from Josephus’ own pen 
that he wrote some of his works, at least, 
originally in his native Aramaic, but 
that, wishing to give them wider cur- 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 17 


rency, he afterward translated them 
into Greek for the people of the Roman 
Empire and the Jews of the diaspora. 
The peculiarity of this Russian version 
of the wars, as Lehmann-Haupt points 
out, is that it departs so widely from the 
Greek text of Josephus that it cannot 
possibly be derived from it, and it is 
probably a direct translation of Jose- 
phus’ original Aramaic. The passage is 
as follows: “‘ At that time a man ap- 
peared, if he can be called a man. His 
nature and his body were human, but his 
appearance was more than human. He 
performed miracles through some in- 
visible power. Some said of him that 
he was our first Lawgiver (Moses), 
risen from the dead and making himself 
known by many healings and magic 
works; others thought that he was sent 
by God. I personally, in view of his 
whole life, should not call him a mes- 
senger of God. For he opposed many 
things in the Law and did not observe 


18 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


the Sabbath according to ancestral cus- 
tom. Yet, on the other hand, he did 
nothing unworthy or criminal, but only 
through his words did he accomplish 
what he did. And many of the people 
followed him and accepted his doctrine; 
and many souls wavered, thinking that 
through him the Jewish people would be 
liberated from the Roman yoke. It was 
his custom to tarry on the Mount of 
Olives near the city, and it was there 
that he healed people, and there he 
gathered to him one hundred and fifty 
slaves and a great multitude of the 
lower classes. When they saw his 
power and that he could do what he 
willed by the magic of his word, they 
demanded that he proceed into the city 
and destroy the Roman soldiers and 
Pontius Pilate who ruled over us... . 
And when the leaders of the Jews 
learned of this, the high priests gathered 
together and said: ‘ We are powerless 
and weak and cannot defy the Romans; 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? I9 


but inasmuch as the bow is drawn 
against us we shall go and tell Pilate 
what we have heard. Then we shall be 
free from blame. For if Pilate should 
hear of this from others, our property 
may be taken from us and we as well 
as this other man may be slaughtered, 
and the Children of Israel will be dis- 
persed to the ends of the earth.” And 
they went forth and reported this to 
Pilate, and the latter took prompt 
measures and ordered that many of the 
multitude be slain but that their mir- 
acle-worker be brought to him. And 
after Pilate had heard the case against 
him, the Romans took him and cruci- 
fied him according to ancestral custom.” 

Several of these expressions are very 
striking. ‘The designation of the “ serv- 
ants of Christ ” as “‘ slaves ” would be 
a very natural mistake on the part of 
Josephus. St. Paul gloried in calling 
himself “‘the slave” of Jesus Christ. 
The allusion to the Mount of Olives 


20 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


where the arrest of Jesus actually took 
place would be likely to be remembered 
and emphasized by one whose knowl- 
edge of Jesus was confined to the last 
week in Jerusalem. The statement that 
“‘ some said of him that he was our first 
Lawgiver Moses, risen from the dead 
and making himself known by many 
healings and magical works” is 
strangely reminiscent of the reply of the 
disciples to Jesus’ question — “ Whom 
do men say thatIl am?” (St. Mark g- 
27). Yet the introduction of the name 
of Moses, which never occurs in this 
connection in the Gospels, makes it im- 
probable that this passage of Josephus 
is taken from our Scriptures. 

All this presents Josephus’ testimony 
to the existence and fate of Jesus in a 
different light. If further investigation 
corroborates the conclusions of Leh- 
mann-Haupt, there would seem to be 
no question that Josephus, as we should 
expect, did allude to Jesus and gave a 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 2I 


detailed account of his last week in 
Jerusalem at the precise place in his 
work where such an account would 
naturally fall, namely, among the acts 
of Pilate in suppressing insurrections. 
From its obvious similarities with the 
famous passage of the Antiquities it is 
plain that the detailed statement we 
have quoted, though now found in the 
Russian translation of the Wars, is in 
some ways associated with this passage. 
In any case we may be sure that Jose- 
phus would have written more freely of 
such matters as the “Insurrection of 
Jesus,” to his own people in Aramaic 
than he would have written in Greek 
for the Roman world to read. 

In his comment on the value of this 
new evidence, Lehmann-Haupt re- 
marks: “ Many will regard these com- 
paratively recent discoveries as im- 
portant primarily for the evidence they 
contain that Jesus was an _ historical 
character. From the scholar’s point of 


22 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


view that is secondary. The historical 
character of Jesus needs no additional 
proof. We have both adequate New 
Testament and lay authority for his 
existence.” Whether this passage ever 
stood in the Greek version of Josephus’ 
works, and if so, by whom it was de- 
leted, whether by a Jew who wished to 
suppress every allusion to the Lord, or 
by a Christian who found it objection- 
able and who substituted for it expres- 
sions Josephus could not have used 
unless he himself were a Christian, we 
have no means of knowing. We are 
able, however, to determine with some 
definiteness when the Christian rewrit- 
ing of the famous passage of the Anti- 
quities took place. Origen, writing in 
the first half of the third century, defi- 
nitely states that Josephus did not 
admit that Jesus was the Messiah. 
(Contra Celsum 1.47 and Comment. in 
Matth. X. 17, quoted by Klausner). 
Eusebius, the Church historian, who 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 23 


lived in the fourth century, quotes the 
passage as it has come down to us, 
(e.g. Eccles. Hist. Bk. I. ch. 11.) Be- 
tween Origen and Eusebius the falsifi- 
cation took place. No Christian writer, 
so far as I am aware, quotes the newly 
discovered passage of the Slavic manu- 
script. As the Jews of Palestine de- 
tested Josephus for his apostasy to the 
Romans they appear to have made little 
use of his Aramaic writings. It is there- 
fore not surprising that this highly im- 
portant passage should have remained 
concealed so long. As Dr. Vacher 
Burch states in his valuable article: 
“There were Slav monks in Syria in 
the very early days of the Church and 
they were familiar with the Aramaic 
language. Their translation was direct 
from the original and unaffected by 
Greco-Roman influence.” ” 

Important also is the critical esti- 
mate of the testimony of Josephus to 
Jesus made by the learned, cautious 


24. WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


and eminently fair-minded Jewish 
scholar, Dr. Joseph Klausner in his 
“ Jesus of Nazareth.” * ‘This is the first 
work on the life of the Lord written in 
a Semitic idiom and of a quality to 
command the attention of European 
and American scholars, since New Tes- 
tament times. In his careful presenta- 
tion of the Jewish background of the 
life of the Lord, Klausner by no means 
regards the whole passage of Josephus 
as a forgery. Although, at the time of 
his writing, Klausner was unacquainted 
with the Slavic manuscript to which 
reference has been made, he considers it 
highly improbable that Josephus should 
have failed to comment on events so 
important as the appearance of Jesus 
and the rise of Christianity. Naturally 
Klausner does not accept those parts of 
Josephus’ text which almost all Chris- 
tian scholars reject. Omitting these, 
the passage which may be ascribed to 
Josephus runs as follows: 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 25 


‘““Now there was at this time (i.e. 
about the time of the rising against 
Pilate, who wanted to extract money 
from the temple for the purpose of 
bringing water to Jerusalem from a dis- 
tant spring), Jesus, a wise man, for he 
was a doer of wonderful works and a 
teacher of such men as receive the truth 
with pleasure. He drew to him both 
many of the Jews and many of the Gen- 
tiles, and when Pilate, at the suggestion 
of the principal men among us, had 
condemned him to the cross, those who 
loved him first ceased not (to do so) and 
the race of Christians, so named from 
him, are not extinct even now.” 

This part of the passage Klausner 
considers genuine and characteristic- 
ally in Josephus’ style. The miracles 
of Jesus would be no stumbling stone to 
him for he takes pleasure in telling 
miraculous stories of his own. ‘There 
were many Gentiles in the Church when 
Josephus wrote and he conceives that it 


26 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


was so from the beginning. ‘There is 
nothing in this passage which might not 
be written by a Pharisee, but there are 
several expressions not likely to be 
voiced by a Christian. A Christian 
writer would not be likely to describe 
his Lord as “a wise man.” In fact the 
interpolation “if it be lawful to call 
him a man” shows how the words 
grated on the Christian ear. As Jose- 
phus describes John the Baptist as “a 
good man,” and a kind of philosopher, 
suppressing all allusions to his witness 
to Jesus as Messiah, so he calls Jesus 
“a wise man, a teacher of such as re- 
ceive the truth with pleasure.” In brief 
it appears to be highly probable, if not 
certain, that Josephus bore witness to 
Jesus, and, remembering that he was 
not a Christian and that he wrote with 
a desire not to offend the Romans, we 
have no reason to expect more from 
him than we now possess. 

There is another brief passage, in the 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 27 


Antiquities, which is open to no such 
objection as the first, in which Josephus 
casually alludes to the Lord, cites Jesus 
by name as an historical person and 
gives an account of the death of the 
Apostle James. 

“He (the Chief Priest Ananus or 
Annas) called the Council together for 
judgment and brought before them the 
brother of Jesus who was called the 
Christ, James by name, along with 
several others, and condemned them to 
be stoned.” 

This evidence is the more valuable 
because of its casual character and be- 
cause it contains nothing which Jose- 
phus might not have written. Here 
Josephus, far from regarding Jesus as a 
mythical person, speaks plainly of His 
family relations. 

This is the James whom Paul, in 
Galatians, calls a pillar of the Church, 
and to whom, in I Corinthians, he 
says Jesus appeared after His resurrec- 


28 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


tion. His death occurred a.p. 63, and is 
fully described by the old Church 
writer, Hegesippus. This passage 
Klausner regards as entirely genuine, 
nor has any good argument ever been 
adduced against it. Though Origen in 
his commentary on St. Matthew (Bk. 
X. 17) ascribes words to Josephus in 
regard to James which are not found 
there, yet it is plain that Origen is quot- 
ing from Hegesippus, not from Jose- 
phus, the name “ Hegesippus,” as 
Klausner points out, in Hebrew is writ- 
ten “ Joseph.” 

We have, also, another independent 
Jewish witness to the existence of Jesus, 
of which I should like to remind our 
Jewish friends, in that strange con- 
glomeration of Jewish wisdom and folly 
known as the Talmud, which Renan 
calls “a bad book.” ‘The earliest parts 
of the Talmud are believed to date from 
the first Christian centuries, and in 
them the name of Jesus is mentioned 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 29 


not infrequently. Laible, in his great 
work, “ Jesus Christ in the Talmud,” * 
has brought to light forty-one such pas- 
sages. Most of these allusions are, of 
course, derogatory. They exhibit both 
ignorance and malice, but no doubt is 
ever expressed in the Talmud as to the 
fact of Jesus’ human existence. His 
mother and His birth are frequently al- 
luded to, in objectionable terms. Joseph 
and Mary Magdalene and the Lord’s 
disciples are mentioned again and again. 
His miracles are discussed and not de- 
nied, though they are ascribed to magic. 
His death is recounted and also His 
claim to be the Son of God. The 
earliest of these references appear to 
date from a time when Christianity and 
Judaism were not entirely separated, 
as, in the later portions of the Talmud, 
when Jesus’ name is mentioned, the 
malediction follows: “ May his name 
and his memory be blotted out.” One 
does not feel such hatred for a myth. 


30 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


As a proof of the early date of these 
Jewish aspersions, I may cite the fact 
that in Justin Martyr’s celebrated “ Dia- 
logue with Trypho the Jew ” (about 160 
A.D. and in Celsus’ still more famous 
“True Word” written at about the 
same time, a Jew is introduced who 
utters many of the same calumnies 
which we find in the Talmud, and in 
the “'Toledoth Jeshua.” In neither of 
these works is there the slightest sus- 
picion that Jesus was not an historical 
person. 

As the learned Jewish scholar, Dr. 
Samuel Krauss, says, “ The references 
to Jesus in the Talmud are older than 
the Talmud.” ° Klausner also regards 
the aspersions which Celsus learned 
from the Jews and which afterward re- 
appeared in the Talmud, as proof of the 
very early date of the Talmud’s allu- 
sions to Jesus. He remarks: “ It there- 
fore follows that the accounts of the 
first three Gospels are fairly early and 


-WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 31 


that it is unreasonable to question 
either the existence of Jesus (as certain 
scholars have done both in the eight- 
eenth century and in our own time) or 
his general character as it is depicted 
in these Gospels. This is the single his- 
torical value which we can attribute to 
the early Talmudical accounts of 
Jesus.” (p. 20.) 

I shall conclude this study by citing 
the few, brief passages in classical 
Roman writers of the first century, in 
which the name of Jesus is mentioned. 

In the year 64, about thirty years 
after Jesus’ death, the Emperor Nero is 
believed to have taken it into his head 
to set fire to Rome. The people were 
deeply incensed, and Nero began to 
look around to see if there were not 
other persons in Rome more hated than 
he was. He thought of the innocent 
Christians, and, collecting all of them 
he could find, possibly St. Paul among 
the number, he put them to death with 


32 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


hideous tortures for the amusement of 
the people. 

Commenting on this vile act, the 
great Roman historian, Tacitus, re- 
marks in his Annals, written at the 
beginning of the second century (XV. 
44), “In order to suppress this super- 
stition, Nero exposed and visited with 
the most exquisite punishments those 
whom the people call Christians who, 
on account of their misdeeds, were 
hated. The founder of this name is 
Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, 
was put to death by the Procurator 
Pontius Pilate. This corrupting super- 
stition, suppressed for a moment, broke 
out again, not merely in Judea, the 
home of the evil; but also in Rome 
whither all horrible and shameful things 
flow together from all parts of the world 
and find acceptance.” 

Certainly no Christian wrote these 
words, nor apparently, did Tacitus get 
this information from Christians, but 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 33 


from Roman sources. No one has been 
able to invalidate this highly character- 
istic passage. These words bear wit- 
ness to the name of Christ (if not of 
Jesus) as the founder of Christianity, 
to the time and place of His death, and 
to the fact that Jesus suffered under 
Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. 
Tacitus also informs us that at this 
time, only about thirty years after 
Jesus’ death, great numbers of His fol- 
lowers were to be found in Rome. 
Suetonius, a younger contemporary 
of Tacitus, in his famous Lives of the 
Caesars, in describing the reign of the 
Emperor Claudius (A.D. 41-54), says: 
“Claudius expelled the Jews from 
Rome because, at the instigation of one 
Chrestus, incessant tumults occurred.” 
Chrestus is not a Jewish name and no 
such person is known. Most probably 
Chrestus is a misspelling of Christus. 
The incessant tumults he alludes to are 
probably the attacks of Jews on their 


34 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


fellow countrymen in Rome who ac- 
knowledged Christ. 

This statement is supported by the 
Acts of the Apostles (XVIII, 2), which 
informs us of the meeting of Paul with 
Aquila and Priscilla, in Corinth, who 
had left Italy “ because Claudius had 
commanded all the Jews to depart from 
Rome.” This expulsion could not have 
occurred later than 52 A.p. (Schirer). 
If, with the majority of Christian schol- 
ars, we identify Chrestus with Christus, 
we have here definite proof that within 
twenty years after the death of Jesus, 
many Jews in Rome believed not 
merely in His existence, but in His 
Messiahship. 

Even if Chrestus is only a Christian 
disciple, the passage from Suetonius 
proves that at this time the agitation of 
the Messiahship of Jesus had assumed 
such proportions in Rome that Claud- 
ius felt it necessary to banish all Jews 
from the city because of it. From 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 35 


either point of view this passage is of 
great importance. 

In his Life of Nero, Suetonius alludes 
to Christians again as a race of men 
addicted to “a new and vile super- 
stition.” 

In the year 103, Pliny the Younger, 
a younger contemporary of Tacitus and 
one of the most lovable of men, had 
been sent by the Emperor Trajan to be 
Governor of Pontus and Bithynia, in 
Asia Minor. There he found himself 
confronted with the difficult problem of 
what to do with the Christians who re- 
fused to offer sacrifice and to pay the 
usual divine honors to the Emperor. 

Among his delightful letters, the most 
interesting is one in which he asks his 
royal master for instructions on this 
subject. In the course of this letter he 
says that when he had summoned cer- 
tain men and women, accused of the 
crime of being Christians, “they 
affirmed that their whole guilt and er- 


36 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


ror lay in the fact that on a stated day 
they assembled before dawn and ad- 
dressed a prayer to Christ as to a divin- 
ity, binding themselves with a solemn 
oath, not for the purpose of any wicked 
design, but that they should never com- 
mit any fraud, theft, or adultery, nor to 
falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge 
when called upon to deliver it up. After 
which it was their custom to separate 
and then to reassemble, to eat a com- 
mon harmless meal.” 

This is probably the first time that a 
Roman of good birth and breeding 
thought it worth while to inquire into 
the crime of being a Christian, and this 
is what he found. I am sorry to add 
that Pliny, wishing to satisfy his curi- 
osity further, put two young Christian 
slave girls to the torture. From them 
he learned nothing but their heroic 
faith. 

Such, as far as my knowledge ex- 
tends, (and I imagine you wish it had 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 37 


not extended so far) is the whole ev- 
idence of Christ’s century, outside our 
canonical New Testament and the writ- 
ings of early Christians, of the human 
existence of Jesus — Josephus, the Tal- 
mud, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny. If 
there are other witnesses, I should be 
glad to be reminded of them. They are 
few and their witness brief and scanty 
— yet when we remember the obscurity 
and the brevity of Jesus’ earthly life, we 
have no reason to wonder that the ev- 
idence is not more copious. Of course 
these scanty references are not our rea- 
sons for believing that Jesus lived. Proof 
for this He Himself rendered in words 
that could not be counterfeited, in deeds 
that changed the course of history and 
the meaning of life. Yet these literal 
allusions to Christ and His people, taken 
wholly from the lips of contemporary 
enemies and indifferent’ persons, are 
sufficient to prove that he lived a human 
life and died on the cross under Pontius 


38 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


Pilate. At this date the question of the 
existence of the greatest Person in his- 
tory, ought not to be raised. We can re- 
gard the vagaries of mythologists with 
indulgence. ‘They can convince no one 
who does not wish to be convinced, but 
we should expect more common sense 
on the part of our realistic Jews. A 
century ago a similar attempt was made 
to resolve Gotama Buddha into a myth- 
ical person, an attempt which utterly 
failed. How much more perverse and 
foolish it is to raise this question now, 
after all the scientific work that has 
been done in the New Testament, in re- 
gard to the Lord Jesus, about whom a 
hundred times as much is known as we 
know of Buddha. 

Doubtless there are some who will 
say: We have the image and the words 
of Him whom we call “ Jesus” in any 
event, and they cannot be taken away 
from us; what difference does it make 
Whether this image and these words 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 39 


have an historical or an ideal origin? 
As I am engaged here in establishing 
matters of fact, I prefer not to allow 
myself to be diverted to questions of 
value and importance. It is enough to 
reply that Christianity is an historical 
religion, founded by or on an historical 
person. The ancient Church was at 
great pains to defend this position, in 
her Gospels and in her creeds, and we 
should not lightly and needlessly aban- 
don it. 

Perhaps today, better than ever be- 
fore, we can understand why in the 
Apostles’ Creed we still say: “ He suf- 
fered under Pontius Pilate, was cruci- 
fied, dead and buried.” This is the 
Church’s reply to every mythical the- 
ory, and her documentary evidence of 
the human life and death of her Lord. 

In conclusion, | may remind you that 
this mythical theory is not a new one. 
It existed on a large scale in the sec- 
ond century among the Gnostics and 


40 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


other fantastic sects, and it was against 
these speculative dreams that the real- 
istic statements of the Apostles’ Creed, 
which affirm the facts of Jesus’ human 
life and death, were formulated. 








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TAGS: NON SESE 
je: AS - mes 
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Ways Ca 6 x? <6 Sats a(S S 
SST WHERD SLD 





11. THE WITNESS OF FRIENDS 
i SPOKE last Sunday of our 


evidence of the existence of 
= Jesus as an historical person, 
“S adducing only the witness of 
enemies. Today I mean to continue 
this statement by citing the witness of 
friends. As these witnesses are unend- 
ing, I must confine myself this morning 
to only a few. In this discussion I am 
not beating the air, I am replying in 
words of soberness and truth to one of 
the most radical attacks which Chris- 
tianity has ever sustained, and I offer 
this evidence not merely to this congre- 
gation, but to the country, to anyone 
who may care to make use of it. 

In considering the witness of friends 
we naturally think first of St. Paul, who 





42 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


was converted to Christianity only a 
few years after the death of Jesus, and 
whose authentic Epistles form the ear- 
liest writings of the New Testament. 
Paul gloried in being a witness to Jesus 
Christ ; to us, today, he is a witness in a 
sense he never dreamt of. Paul him- 
self is not a man who can easily be dis- 
solved into a nature-myth or explained 
away as the personification of religious 
aspirations. He is too brisk, too hu- 
man, too combative for that. Even 
Jensen would hesitate to fit him into 
his Gilgamesh story. The mythologists 
are too intelligent to claim Paul as their 
own. What they assert is that Paul did 
not regard the Christ he preached as a 
human being, but as a heavenly being, 
created in the image of Neo-Platonic 
philosophy, the second Adam, the man 
from Heaven — in short,an idea,a lofty, 
philosophic dream. It must be admit- 
ted that there is a considerable el- 
ement of speculation and metaphysical 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 43 


thought in Paul’s estimate of Jesus, 
whether Neo-Platonic or rabbinical, but 
this is never carried to the point of the 
denial of Jesus’ earthly existence. That 
was reserved for the Gnostics, who were 
always accounted heretics. 

Some of our modern skeptics think it 
easier to dispose of Paul’s witness by 
denying that any writings of his have 
come down to us, and that all the Epis- 
tles we call Pauline are spurious. As 
this is a question of general interest, I 
may briefly comment on it. The valid- 
ity of certain Epistles of Paul, like Gal- 
atians, I Thessalonians, Corinthians, 
etc., has never seriously been questioned 
by any great New Testament scholar. 
Epistles written a little later, like Ephe- 
sians and MHebrews, are obviously 
modeled on the form and substance of 
the earlier Epistles and presuppose 
them. A proof of the fact that Paul 
wrote a number of Epistles is contained 
in the New Testament itself, in the 


44. WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


second Epistle ascribed to Peter, which 
is all the more likely to be authentic 
because it is not particularly compli- 
mentary: “ Even as our beloved brother 
Paul also wrote unto you, as also in all 
his Epistles, wherein are some things 
hard to understand.” Clement of 
Rome, “a father of the Church,” writ- 
ing before the year 95 a.p. quotes explic- 
itly Paul’s first Epistle to the Corin- 
thians and also Ephesians, the Epistle 
to the Hebrews and I Peter, so that by 
the end of the first century the later 
Fpistles as well as the earlier were in ex- 
istence. Paul, in his Epistles, did not 
invent a new form of literature — letters 
which were not personal letters but writ- 
ten to groups of persons — for this form 
of communication is to be found not 
merely in the Old Testament and its 
Apocrypha, but among classical au- 
thors. Several of Saint Paul’s Epis- 
tles, like Philemon and II Corinthi- 
ans are probably only personal letters. 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 45 


Perhaps no human writings more per- 
fectly reveal the personality of their au- 
thor, and there are therefore no letters 
which it would be harder to counterfeit. 
Writing in Greek, thinking in Greek, no 
one has done as much as Paul to 
overthrow the whole Greek concep- 
tion of life. No one within Christen- 
dom except Jesus has given us so many 
original thoughts in regard to the mean- 
ing and duties of life. Thoughts like 
these do not spring from the ground, 
nor from the aspirations of communi- 
ties. 

Is it true that Paul tells us nothing of 
the human life of his Lord, or that he 
conceived that Jesus had no human life? 
In I Corinthians he gives us an ex- 
plicit statement of the founding of the 
Eucharist, the last supper, the night in 
which He was betrayed. In the same 
Epistle he gives us the first and the most 
exact account of the resurrection ap- 
pearances of Jesus which we possess. 


46 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


In Galatians he mentions James as the 
Lord’s brother. In the same Fpistle he 
tells us that Jesus was born of a woman, 
and, in Romans, of the seed of David 
after the flesh. In Galatians, that He 
was educated under the law; in I Co- 
rinthians he speaks of the Twelve Apos- 
tles. Again and again he alludes to 
Jesus’ sufferings and to his death on the 
cross. He also mentions several of the 
Lord’s sayings, one of which, but for 
Paul, we should never have heard — 
“It is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive.” 

From these statements which I have 
taken only from the Epistles which are 
unquestionably Paul’s, it would almost 
be possible to construct an outline of 
the life of Jesus. So the assertion that 
Paul did not conceive of Jesus as a hu- 
man being is not quite correct. In fact 
it is impossible to suppose that Paul 
traveled about with St. Luke and St. 
Mark, who afterward wrote Gospels, 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 47 


without hearing much of the life of the 
Lord. 

It is true Paul uttered that strange 
enigmatic saying: “Yea, though we 
have known Christ after the flesh, yet 
now henceforth know we him no more.” 
Does this imply that Paul himself was 
totally indifferent to all those sacred 
incidents in the life of the Lord which 
eternally charm us? Does it not rather 
imply that at some time of his life, per- 
haps in the last week in Jerusalem, Paul 
had known, or at least had seen and 
heard Jesus, but that this contact had 
done Paul no good, but had hardened 
him in his unbelief? The people of 
Nazareth had known Christ after the 
flesh, but this knowledge only made 
them wish to murder Him when He be- 
gan to preach to them. 

Paul’s interest in the earthly life of 
Christ was swallowed up in his sudden 
realization that this being whom he had 
hated was the Messiah of God, — not 


48 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


the Messiah of victory and glory, of 
which he had dreamed, but the Messiah 
of suffering, of lowly obedience and 
love and pity, which he had despised. 
Paul, we must always remember, was 
not converted by constant companion- 
ship with Jesus, nor by Christ’s preach- 
ing and mighty works. All that he had 
heard of these only revolted and embit- 
tered him. He was converted by a 
vision of Jesus after Christ’s death, 
and his religion was largely contact 
with this unseen presence. Hence 
we have no reason to expect of him 
lengthy accounts of Jesus’ earthly 
life. 

The fact that he recognized Jesus 
when he saw Him on the way to 
Damascus, and had no doubt as to his 
identity, looks as if he had seen Jesus 
before, when he was living. (“ Am I 
not an Apostle? Have I not seen the 
Lord? ”) I freely admit that many of 
St. Paul’s thoughts and doctrinal beliefs 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 49 


about Christ lie entirely outside the 
domain of human life and history, but 
they do not affect his plain allusions to 
the human facts of Jesus’ life which I 
have cited. 

I come now to the Gospels, and here 
I shall speak plainly, without much re- 
serve. I happen to have one qualifica- 
tion for speaking on a certain aspect of 
our Gospels, which many better men 
and better scholars do not possess and 
which I do not intend to forego. In 
dealing with this new form of skep- 
ticism, it would seem that one must 
apologize for using the very books 
which reflect the life of Jesus as proofs 
of His existence. [I do not intend so to 
stultify myself. 

The reason for this is that the Gospels 
abound in what we call “ miracles.” 
Modern science affirms that miracles, 
in the sense of violations of universal 
law, do not happen, and without this 
supposition the scientific explanation 


50 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


of things would be impossible. These 
new critics therefore declare that our 
Gospels, which contain many such oc- 
currences, cannot possibly be regarded 
as historical recitals, but that they are 
either fictitious or mythical. This is 
a position which no great New Tes- 
tament scholar, not even Strauss, has 
taken. 

There is, however, another way of 
approaching this subject which, though 
at present not much considered, will 
prove the correct way: that is, by re- 
garding such acts not as violations of 
the laws of Nature, nor as caused by the 
direct intervention of God, but as due 
to the operation of psychic or spiritual 
forces which we are just beginning to 
rediscover. The old controversy in re- 
gard to miracles is as dead as a door- 
nail. The writers of the Gospels do not 
call these acts “ miracles,” in our sense 
of the word, but usually “ mighty 
works.” About eighty per cent of these 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 51 


acts ascribed to Jesus in the Synoptic 
Gospels (the miracles of John are 
largely of another order) are the heal- 
ing of the sick and the expulsion of de- 
mons. For the first time in many cen- 
turies we are in a position to speak with 
some confidence on this subject. Be- 
yond all peradventure many sick per- 
sons are cured of a great variety of 
bodily and mental ailments every year 
by purely spiritual means. I will say 
nothing about Christian Science, though 
I do not doubt it works many cures, 
because, having broken with medicine, it 
cannot establish a diagnosis, nor prove 
what it asserts. No such charge can be 
brought against Lourdes, where highly 
trained physicians are in attendance, 
and whose “ cures ” have been attested 
by medical men from all parts of the 
world. I have studied this question at- 
tentively and I have had eighteen years 
of experience of my own, and in all vari- 
eties of so-called “ spiritual healing ” 


52 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


known to me I distinguish these forms 
and agencies. 

Ist. That which is accomplished by 
psychological methods, the inculcation 
of metaphysical principles, and the ap- 
plication of normal spiritual teaching, 
prayer, suggestion, self-suggestion, psy- 
cho-analysis, and other attempts to 
unify personality and to restore social 
relationship. This applies chiefly to 
affections of personality. 

2nd. Cures which are effected, by 
what means we know not, by the sheer 
power of faith, such as we see in the Gos- 
pel in the woman healed of the issue of 
blood, and also in many of the cases 
treated successfully at Lourdes, St. 
Anne de Beaupré and other shrines. 

3rd. Cures which are effected directly 
by contact with a highly developed psy- 
chic or spiritual personality, and which 
cannot be assigned to faith alone. When 
I had the opportunity of examining a 
number of Mr. Hickson’s patients, after 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 53 


his first visit to Boston, I came to the 
conclusion that he possessed such a per- 
sonality. At his meeting with our clergy 
in the Cathedral, Dr. Kammerer asked 
him a direct question, and in reply Mr. 
Hickson told us story after story of his 
psychic perceptions and experiences. I 
consider Mr. Hickson’s methods objec- 
tionable, but I cite him as a well-known 
example of a man possessing this power. 
We see evidence of all these forms of 
healing in the Gospel stories. 

Ath. Occasional cures which are 
effected by means which at present we 
cannot explain, although several such 
occurrences which have come under my 
observation have been attended by 
supernormal psychic phenomena, such 
as visions, a premonitory voice, etc. 
Such changes usually take place sud- 
denly, and in several instances known 
to me they have been permanent, in 
the sense that they have continued 
through a term of years. In view of 


54. WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


what we know today, the challenge of 
all the healing acts of Christ and the re- 
jection of the Gospels because they con- 
tain the record of such acts are sheer 
ignorance and folly. 

But, it will be said, the Gospels are 
subject to a more serious suspicion. 
They are committed to the ancient 
superstition that some forms of disease 
are caused by the invasion of alien 
spirits. This superstition condemns 
them on their face. It remains to be 
seen what the next two generations will 
think of this superstition. He who 
thinks that he has spoken the last word 
in science is a simpleton. A hundred 
years ago the idea that many physical 
diseases are caused by the invasion of 
invisible organisms would have been re- 
garded as a wild superstition. Why? 
Because at that time men had no ev- 
idence of such invasions. 

It took me ten years to convince my- 
self that certain changes of personality, 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 55 


such as dissociation, the emergence of 
several alien personalities unknown to 
one another, might be due to the inva- 
sion of alien spirits, and I believe in the 
possibility of such an occurrence only 
because of evidence I could not evade. 
If Jesus believed it, it was because He 
had better evidence. In spite of the 
splendid scientific training of our alien- 
ists and in spite of the vast sums we 
spend in the maintenance of our asy- 
lums, not a very large proportion of 
their inmates recover their sanity. 
When the possibility that Jesus’ view of 
certain cases is admitted to be correct 
and appropriate methods are devised for 
treating such cases, I have not the 
slightest doubt that the proportion of 
recovery will be greatly increased. Of 
course, this does not apply to organic 
deterioration of the brain and nervous 
system. 

As this statement will undoubtedly 
encounter condemnation and ridicule 


56 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


from men who have no personal knowl- 
edge of the subject, I may be allowed 
to fortify it by two names which the ed- 
ucated, at all events, will regard with re- 
spect. William James says: “ The re- 
fusal of modern ‘ Enlightenment’ to 
treat ‘ Possession’ as an hypothesis, to 
be spoken of as even possible, in spite 
of the massive human tradition based 
on concrete experience in its favor, has 
always seemed to me a curious example 
of the power of fashion in things 
scientific. ‘That the demon _ theory 
will have its innings again is to my 
mind absolutely certain. One _ has 
to be ‘scientific’ indeed to be blind 
and ignorant enough to deny its possi- 
bility 

It will probably startle you to hear 
the august name of Immanuel Kant 
mentioned in this connection. Yet in 
his comments on the visions of Sweden- 
borg Kant says: “I confess I am very 
much inclined to assert the existence of 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 57 


immaterial beings in this world, and to 
put my soul itself into that class. These 
immaterial beings form perhaps a great 
whole which may be called the imma- 
terial world and it will be proved, I do 
not know where or when, that the hu- 
man soul in this life is in indissoluble 
communion with all immaterial natures 
of the spirit world, on which it acts and 
from which it receives impressions.” 
Naturally, in accordance with his crit- 
ical principles, Kant makes this state- 
ment only hypothetically.’ 

The Gospel stories of Jesus’ treatment 
of the sick are related with such trans- 
parent simplicity and naturalness, some 
of them are so fortified by Jesus’ au- 
thentic words; in other cases, like the 
raising of Jairus’ daughter, we can see 
so plainly the methods He employed, 
that it would be safe to say that their 
invention would be more miraculous 
than the miracle, and the wholesale re- 
jection of the Gospels on this ground 


58 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


only implies defective knowledge of the 
very matters under consideration. 
Even the so-called nature miracles 
which are well attested in the Synoptics, 
like walking on water, though they lie 
at present beyond our experience, may 
come within the experience of men a 
century hence. At all events we are 
now approaching the subject from the 
right side, from our growing knowledge 
of spiritual forces and the operation of 
spiritual laws. We are engaged in the 
scientific task of gathering evidence, 
and we find in the New Testament 
marvelous examples of occurrences of 
which we, too, have some experience. 
Instead of merely denying, we are in- 
creasing human knowledge and ex- 
panding human nature by observing 
and experimenting. The Resurrection 
of Jesus is the most striking example 
of the value of the new approach to an 
old problem, as to which I will merely 
cite the words of the illustrious Frederic 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 59 


Myers: “ A century hence it will be be- 
lieved by all reasonable men.” 

If our Gospel tradition, as the my- 
thologists affirm, were the myth of a god 
in human form, the story would have 
begun with the descent of this god from 
heaven, as the late birth-stories of Bud- 
dha begin, as the apocryphal Gospel of 
Marcion in the second century begins. 
The substance of such a Gospel would 
be essentially mythical, with a few hu- 
man traits shining through, and the 
victory over death and the conquest of 
hell would have been its great dramatic 
climax. ‘The resurrection appearances 
would not have been the modest, brief, 
psychical events which Paul and the ear- 
liest Gospels portray, but massive rev- 
elations made to the whole nation. In 
short, our Gospels would be exactly 
what we actually possess in a whole 
aftermath of late apocryphal Gospels 
which are filled with just such fictions. 
We have only to compare these highly 


60 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


painted, fanciful romances with the so- 
ber, human quality of our canonical 
Gospels to see the difference between 
myth and history. 

The mere fact that Jesus’ personal ap- 
pearance is nowhere described, nowhere 
alluded to in the Gospels, shows how 
little they are the product of conscious 
art. Nor is there the slightest attempt 
to describe the character of the Lord, as 
any biographer, intent on making his 
character live, would have tried to do. 
For this there is only one explanation. 
The old traditional material, on which 
the Evangelists drew, did not contain 
such descriptions and the Evangelists 
would not invent them. 

In dealing with this new form of 
skepticism one encounters a reckless- 
ness of criticism which is self-condem- 
natory. It is confidently stated that 
our oldest Gospel of Mark was not writ- 
ten in Palestine and it does not describe 
Palestine. It was written in Rome, the 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? O61 


whole setting of Mark’s Gospel is Ro- 
man society, the agrarian system of 
Italy, the Roman slave world, etc. A 
whole volume might be written on this 
subject. Volumes have been written in 
recent times, and the opinion of the best 
geographers and historians is that one 
of the strongest proofs of the historical 
character of our Synoptic Gospels is the 
perfect propriety with which they de- 
scribe the social, moral and political 
life of Galilee at the times of Jesus. This 
is the more striking when we remember 
that immediately after the death of 
Jesus Galilee disappears from the life 
of the Church. Having given Jesus to 
the world, she almost ceased to exist. 
There was but one time, then, in the his- 
tory of the early Church, when such pic- 
tures of Galilee as we have in the Gos- 
pels could have been painted. That was 
during the life of Jesus. If the story 
of the life of Jesus had been composed 
in some distant country, by a man ig- 


62 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


norant of the geography and social life 
of Galilee, could such an one have 
painted the pictures we possess of Ca- 
pernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Gen- 
nesareth, Gadara, the country of the 
Gergasenes, Decapolis, Cesarea Phi- 
lippi and many another little place? Or, 
if a writer were depicting the life of a 
mythical deity, what interest would he 
have had in the names of the Twelve 
Apostles, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon 
of Cyrene and Simon the leper, Alex- 
ander and Rufus, who play no part 
whatever, Mary Magdalene, Joanna 
the wife of Chusa, Susanna and of many 
another humble person? Or what con- 
cern would such a writer have with the 
Jewish manner of washing the hands 
before meals, with fasting, praying in 
public, rules for the observance of the 
Sabbath, divorce laws, etc., especially as 
all these were matters which Jesus crit- 
icized and rejected. These are not 
themes of mythology, but table-talk and 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 63 


the incidents of every-day life, and it is 
with such humble persons and occur- 
rences that our Gospels are filled. (von 
Soden) ° 

We have another opportunity to test 
the historical character of St. Mark’s 
Gospel. The earliest information in re- 
gard to this composition purports to 
come from the quaint old Church writer, 
Papias, about the year 140 A. It is 
given us by the Church historian, EKu- 
sebius (of the fourth century), who 
quotes from a work of Papias now lost. 
In commenting on this Gospel, after 
complaining of Mark’s lack of order in 
relating the incidents of the Lord’s life, 
as to which Papias was quite correct, 
he adds that Mark derived the material 
for his Gospel from the conversations 
and recollections of Simon Peter. Let 
us look at the Gospel for a moment, and 
see if we can find evidence for the truth 
of this assertion which would associate 
the Gospel especially with Peter, that is 


64. WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


to say with an eye-witness, the chief eye- 
witness, of Jesus’ ministry and His most 
intimate friend. 

After a brief allusion to the ministry 
of John the Baptist, the baptism of 
Jesus and the temptation in the wilder- 
ness, which is obviously an epitome of 
more copious information, the broad 
stream of detailed narrative begins when 
Peter was called to be a disciple. The 
stream contracts again when Jesus 
leaves Capernaum, Peter’s home. The 
narrative becomes graphic and explicit 
once more when Jesus returns to Caper- 
naum and heals a demoniac there. 
Then follows the vivid story of Jesus’ 
visit to Peter’s house and the cure of his 
mother-in-law, who lay sick in a fever. 
Next is mentioned the scene in Peter’s 
boat, when Jesus preached to the people 
gathered on the shore of the lake. Later, 
in all the great scenes of Christ’s suffer- 
ings, Peter plays the leading part. It is 
Peter who, in reply to Jesus’ question, 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 65 


“Whom do ye say that I am? ” utters 
the decisive word, “Thou art the 
Christ.” It was Peter who rebuked 
Jesus when the Lord announced His 
coming death; Peter who, on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, said, “ Lord, 
It is good for us to be here.” In St. 
Mark, Peter’s denial of Jesus is so in- 
troduced as to break the thread of his 
narrative, but to Mark it was a matter 
of great importance. On the Mount 
of Transfiguration and in Gethsemane, 
Peter plays a part almost as great as 
the part of Jesus. At the resurrection 
the young man commands the women, 
“Go tell His disciples and Peter.” 
In short, there is no question that just 
as John is peculiarly related to the 
Fourth Gospel, so is Peter to St. 
Mark’s Gospel, but there is this differ- 
ence. Most of the allusions to John in 
the Fourth Gospel are intended to glo- 
rify “the Beloved Disciple.” Many of 
Mark’s allusions to Peter —his vain 


66 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


self-confidence, his peasant’s habit of 
falling asleep when he ought to have 
watched with Jesus, his base denial of 
his Master, his fisherman’s oaths and 
curses, were intended to show Peter’s 
weakness and his Master’s reproofs. 
Does not all this look as if Papias’ 
statement is true, and that Mark did 
derive much of his information from 
the lips of that humble, lovable man, 
who afterward atoned for all his 
weaknesses by his death? (Johannes 
Weiss) ° 

There is but one other subject I will 
discuss. Beyond all peradventure, the 
most clear and explicit evidence of the 
existence of Jesus, after His death on 
the cross, consists in the words He spoke, 
in the spiritual teachings ascribed to 
him which have come down to us. 
When once, St. John tells us, the Scribes 
and Pharisees sent messengers to take 
Jesus, they returned empty-handed and, 
in excuse, they said, “‘ Never man spake 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 67 


like this man.” So every succeeding age 


has testified. And so our age, with the 
exception of the mythologists, still tes- 
tifies. Among these witnesses I cite 
the noble Jewish names of Montefiori 
and Klausner. It is idle to say that 
these words were not spoken by Jesus. 
They were known to the Christian com- 
munity before the year 70. Some of 
them were known to St. Paul. If Jesus 
did not utter them, who did? And why 
did not the author of such pearls of 
literature take credit for his creations? 
Moreover, these are not the words of a 
disciple, but of a Master. If we do not 
wish to speak like children, we must 
admit that no one else known to us, in 
the first century, or in any other century, 
could have uttered them, St. Paul least 
of all. Even the sayings ascribed to 
Jesus by St. John, though doubtless they 
contain many a recollection of Him, 
have not the heavenly simplicity, the 
brevity, the pure quality of revelation, 


68 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


and the lack of all self-consciousness of 
the Synoptic sayings. 

Here, then, is the place where the 
mythical explanation of Jesus would 
seem to suffer shipwreck. How does it 
avoid this fate and retain the confidence 
of its adherents? By attacking the 
words themselves by the assurance that 
these revelations of God and human life, 
which have been our spiritual food, the 
source of unnumbered regenerations, 
are not really very wonderful or very 
beautiful, or that what is really wonder- 
ful and beautiful in them was not the 
product of Jesus’ mind, but was bor- 
rowed by Him from the Old Testament 
or from contemporary Judaism. This 
was not Jesus’ own estimate of the value 
of His words. He said, “ Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but my word shall 
not pass away.” 

There are certain words ascribed to 
Jesus in the Gospels and certain situa- 
tions of life there related which would 
not have been invented by one who de- 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 69 


sired to tell the story of a “ hero god,” 
an ideal, heavenly being. Among these 
I may mention the following, “ There 
he could do no mighty work because of 
their unbelief.” “*‘ Why callest thou me 
good? There is none good but one, that 
is God.” “ Of that day knoweth no man, 
not even the angels in Heaven, neither 
the Son, but only the Father.” ‘“ My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me?” also the admission of St. Mark 
that when Jesus began to teach and to 
heal, His family believed Him to be de- 
mented and came to lay hold of Him. 
Also the Jews’ supposition that Jesus 
performed His mighty works by an 
understanding with Beelzebub. As 
Schmiedel, who has collected these say- 
ings, truly says, ““ When a profane his- 
torian finds before him a historical doc- 
ument which testifies to the worship 
of a hero unknown from other sources, 
he attaches, first and foremost, impor- 
tance to those features which cannot be 
deduced merely from the fact of his wor- 


70 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


99 10 


ship. The passages I have cited are 
plainly of this character, and they are so 
interwoven with numerous episodes in 
the life of the Lord that, in themselves, 
they offer guarantees of the reality of 
that life. 

Of course, no one can compel another 
to see beauty and truth in any human 
composition. When Abraham Lincoln 
delivered the Gettysburg oration it 
seems to have been coldly received, and 
for some time Lincoln was under the 
impression that the speech was a failure. 
If a man does not possess spiritual per- 
ception and appreciation of greatness, 
he does not, and no one can give it to 
him. But in regard to the value of the 
sayings of Christ in the Gospels, I would 
rather accept the judgment of _Imman- 
uel Kant, Goethe, Balzac, Renan, Mat- 
thew Arnold and Theodor Keim, than 
the judgment of the Jews and the my- 
thologists. 

As to the originality of Jesus’ teach- 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 71 


ing, we must admit what we have al- 
ways known, that the mind of Jesus 
was saturated with the sacred literature 
of His people. In the whole course of 
His life, Jesus had read but one book, 
if we may call the Old Testament one 
book, but He had read this book as no 
other Jew had read it, separating the 
wheat from the chaff. No other teacher 
had so filled his being with the great 
truths of the Prophets and the Psalms. 
Jesus’ use of these Scriptures is very 
peculiar. He seldom quotes them. 
‘They appear sometimes in a new group- 
ing and combination, sometimes as a 
framework or point of departure for His 
own thought. But in His use of the 
old Scriptures He almost always dis- 
covers in them new depths, new beauty, 
new meaning and brings them to a burn- 
ing focus, as a convex lens gathers up 
the rays of the sun. Above all, He dis- 
tinguishes that which is vital and eter- 
nally true from that which is temporal 


72 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


and relative. The greatness of Jesus’ 
teaching consists almost as much in 
what He eschewed as in what he uttered. 
Does all this require no originality? Is 
it not in itself an enormous work of 
genius? As if to anticipate this very 
criticism, He compared His Kingdom 
of God to a householder “ who bringeth 
forth out of his treasure things new and 
old.” And from what source did Jesus 
derive His parables, His Sermon on the 
Mount, and a thousand other pearls 
of beauty and wisdom which have no 
counterpart in the Old Testament? 
Certainly not from the Son of Sirach, 
nor from the insipid Jewish parables 
and aphorisms of His age, which are 
frequently cited as His originals. And, 
I should like to add, if Jesus’ words were 
so wholly derived from Jewish sources, 
why did the Jews crucify Him for utter- 
ing them? 

Ts Goethe’s “ Faust” a work devoid 
of originality and genius, because the 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 73 


Faust legend was in existence hun- 
dreds of years before Goethe wrote 
his masterpiece? Are Shakespeare’s 
dramas devoid of their originality be- 
cause he usually took their plots from 
old stories? 

A good deal is made by the Jews of 
Jesus’ supposed dependence on Hillel, a 
great doctor of the Law who died about 
ten years before Jesus was born. Many 
of the traditional stories which have 
come down to us in regard to Hillel pre- 
sent him in a very pleasing light. He 
was evidently a man of noble character 
and, for a Jew of his time, he seems to 
have had liberal sentiments. Many of 
his judgments and decisions were mild 
and gracious, and they are often con- 
trasted with the severity of his fellow- 
Rabbi, Shammai. 

The most famous story told of him 
relates that one day a heathen, wishing 
to be instructed in the principles of the 

Jewish religion, came successively to 


74. WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


Shammai and to Hillel and demanded: 
““ Expound the whole Law to me while 
I stand on one leg.” Shammai, enraged, 
beat the inquirer with his staff. When 
Hillel heard the question he replied, 
“What thou wouldest not another 
should do to you, do not to him. That 
is the whole Law, the rest is only com- 
ment,” — a witty, telling answer under 
the circumstances. This is supposed to 
be the origin of Jesus’ Golden Rule. 
‘Perhaps it is, who can say? 

Yet these two sayings are not iden- 
tical. It was characteristic of Hillel that 
he said, “‘ do not,” and it is character- 
istic of Jesus that he said, “do.” ‘The 
same injunction, in the very words of 
Hillel, is related of Confucius more than 
500 years before. If I were inclined to 
employ the reckless methods of our new 
critics, I might say that Hillel had 
adopted this saying from the Chinese 
sage. This seems to me highly improb- 
able and I believe he invented it. If 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 75 


only Hillel had followed his own maxim 
and had regarded such a moral prin- 
ciple as the summary of the Law, he 
might claim some spiritual kinship with 
Jesus, but, unfortunately, he is said to 
have been just as much addicted to hair- 
splitting ceremonial discussions as other 
Jewish doctors. Hillel did not regard it 
as a mockery of God and degrading to 
human intelligence to argue whether an 
ege laid by a hen on the Sabbath day 
might be eaten. Though he admitted 
that the hen who laid the egg was not cul- 
pable, since she was not bound to ob- 
serve the Sabbath, yet he declared that 
if an Israelite took any part in that act, 
in the sense of waiting for the hen to lay 
him an egg, or in cooping her up that 
she might lay an egg for him on the Sab- 
bath, he was guilty of breaking the Law, 
and he further commanded that an egg 
so laid might not be eaten, nor taken in- 
to the house, nor carried from one place 
to another.” Here we are breathing 


76 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


the atmosphere of the Jewish ghetto 
and we find it stifling. 

Strangely, Jesus also spoke of the hen, 
but He did not indulge in such pueril- 
ities as these. He alluded to her pas- 
sionate maternal love, gathering her 
brood within the shelter of her wide- 
spread wings, which He compared to His 
own love. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
thou that killest the prophets and ston- 
est them which are sent unto thee, how 
often would I have gathered thy chil- 
dren together, even as a hen gathereth 
her own brood under her wings, and ye 
would not.” Perhaps no more perfect 
contrast between the genius of contem- 
porary Judaism and the genius of Christ 
can be found than that contained in 
these two sayings. 

Will you allow me to allude to one 
other circumstance in regard to the 
claim put forth for the originality of 
Hillel? Hillel uttered these famous 
words, “ What thou wouldest not an- 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? ive 


other should do to thee, do not to him,” 
as a summary of the whole Law. Apart 
from the fact that this saying is couched 
in negative terms and carries with it no 
command of love or social service, it 
contains no allusion to God nor our re- 
lation to God. From these points of 
view it cannot be regarded as a worthy 
summary of the Law of Israel. 

We remember that a very similar 
question was once put to Jesus, on the 
day when a man came to Him and 
asked, “‘ Master, what is the great com- 
mandment of the Law?” And Jesus, 
instantly combining two of the greatest 
passages of the Old Testament, one from 
Deuteronomy and one from Leviticus, 
replied, “‘ Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart and with all thy 
soul and with all thy mind. This is the 
first and great commandment. And 
there is a second like unto it: Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On 
these two commandments hang all the 


78 WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 


Law and the prophets.” ‘This placing 
side by side of two unsurpassable say- 
ings and separating them from a thou- 
sand other injunctions of Scripture, as 
alone supreme and sufficient, this estab- 
lishment of all religion on love to God 
and man, was an act of originality 
worthy of Jesus and of the highest faith 
of Israel, in comparison with which Hil- 
lel’s saying is a betrayal of Israel’s great- 
est deed. 

And this is the figure which has most 
blessed mankind, the living, human 
Jesus of the Gospels. He has withstood 
centuries of criticism, and it is not likely 
at this day that He will fail us or be 
taken from us. In comparison with the 
keen, drastic, industrious, searching, 
malicious criticism of the heathen, 
Celsus, in the second century, the efforts 
of our mythologists are but child’s play. 
Philosophies have their day. It is the 
fate of all dogmas to fail and be rejected 
one after another. But the personality 


WAS JESUS AN HISTORICAL PERSON? 79 


of Jesus Christ ever becomes more liv- 
ing as He reveals to us new greatness, 
new truth, new conceptions of the mean- 
ing and possibilities of life, and as He 
gives new moral strength and new hope 
to the generations which pass, while He 
remains. 








REFERENCES 


. “The Living Age,” February sixth, 1926. 


. “Josephus and Our Lord,” Diocese of Liver- 


pool Review, Vol. 1, 1926. 


3. “Jesus of Nazareth” (Macmillan Co. 1925). 


10. 


. “Jesus Christus im Talmud,” Heinrich Laible 


und Dolman, 2te Auflage, Leipzig, 1900. 


. “Das Leben Jesu nach Jiidischen Quellen,” 


Berlin, 1902. 


. “Proceedings of the American Society for Psy- 


chical Research, 111, 1909, p. 586. 


. English Translation, “ Dreams of a Spirit Seer,” 


New Church Press, London, 1915, pp. 52 and 
61. 


. “Hat Jesus Gelebt,”? Hermann von Soden, Berlin, 


1910. 


. Johannes Weiss, “Jesus von Nazareth,” 


Tubingen, 1910. 


“Encyclopaedia Biblica,”? Article Gospels, Sec- 
tion 131. 


. “Tractate Betzah,” Babylonian Talmud, Vol. 


IV. Rodkinson’s Translation. 


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